page_title: John Doubleday (restorer)
section_title: At the British Museum
hierarchical_section_title: John Doubleday (restorer) / At the British Museum
caption_attribution_description: English: John Doubleday (c.1798-1856), restorer at the British Museum.
context_page_description: John Doubleday was a British craftsperson, restorer, and dealer in antiquities who was employed by the British Museum for the last 20 years of his life. He undertook several duties for the museum, not least as a witness in criminal trials, but was primarily their specialist restorer, perhaps the first person to hold the position. He is best known for his 1845 restoration of the severely-damaged Roman Portland Vase, an accomplishment that places him at the forefront of his profession at the time.
  While at the British Museum, Doubleday also dealt in copies of coins, medals, and ancient seals. His casts in coloured sulphur and in white metal of works in both national and private collections, allowed smaller collections to hold copies at a fraction of the price that the originals would command. Thousands of his copies entered the collections of institutions and individuals. Yet the accuracy he achieved led to confusion with the originals; after his death he was labelled a forger, but with the caveat that "[w]hether he did copies with the intention of deceiving collectors or not is open to doubt".
  Little is known about Doubleday's upbringing or personal life.
context_section_description: From 1836 to 1856 Doubleday worked in the Department of Antiquities at the British Museum. He appears to have been employed as a freelancer who also occasionally acted as an agent in sales to the museum. At times he presented the museum with items including coins, medals, and Egyptian objects. Among other donations, his 1830 gift of 2,433 casts of medieval seals was the only significant donation recorded by the museum that year, he offered several coins and another 750 casts the following year, and in 1836, he presented the museum with a Henry Corbould lithograph of himself. A further presentation in 1837 was still considered, in 1996, to be one of the museum's most important collections of casts of seals. He seems to have been the museum's primary, and perhaps its first, dedicated restorer; his death was described as leaving the post vacant. At his death, it was noted that he was "chiefly employed in the reparation of innumerable works of art, which could not have been intrusted to more skilful or more patient hands", and that he "was well known as one of the most valuable servants of that department".
caption: 1836 lithograph of Doubleday, by Henry Corbould
exif: {"Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "44", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4491"}